Helluva Deal! (Serial Attached SCSI Bundle)

[Handruin]

You have some fun toys. I haven't done a lot of work with GSX server, but it's otherwise similar to the workstation version and also shares some similarities with ESX server which I'm familiar with.

We don't have as powerful machines as you do for VMware. Right now I've got three hosts setup with ESX server 2.5 with VMotion enabled. The three hosts are comprised of two older Dell 6650's (quad Xeon with 20GB & 16GB of RAM) and a Dell 2650 (dual Xeon with 8GB of RAM).

The vmotion feature is very neat. If you haven't had a chance to play with it (or heard of it) it allows you to migrate a live VM (with I/O going) from one physical server to another with zero down time. We're using the in-house symmetrix for SAN-based storage. Somewhere around 400GB's mirrored and SRDF's to another symmetrix. I don't use the internal hard drives for much. We've converted three physical machines into some 20+ virtuals. We've made back some ROI in our lab with this environment. Not just in the number of hosts, but also in lab space, but with flexibility in templates, and also with increased uptime.

 

[MaxBurn]

Anyone tried to contact them lately, my emails to onlineorders@adaptecstore.com keep getting bounced as undeliverable.

 

[sechs]

I called sales (not customer support) yesterday. They said that they have cards and that drives should be in late this week. The sales guy reported that Seagate was running a new revision, and that this was the cause of the delay.

Keep in mind, this is the sales folks saying this.

 

[MaxBurn]

I cancelled my order today, exactly one calendar month after I placed the order. I emailed them a couple times earlier in the week and I was pretty put off by them closing the onlineorders@adaptecstore.com email account (everything bounces, but in December it worked). They have another contact address at sales@adaptec.com, but I sent two emails earlier in the week to it and I never got a reply.

I would like to hear reports of people getting their packages. Personally I think they realized their mistake in not qualifying people, had a flood of orders, and are using delaying tactics and bad CS to get people to cancel their order.

At any rate, due to another problem, I no longer even have a PCI slot to put this in anyway so I will stick with my trusty WD Raptor. It would have been nice though.

 

[sechs]

I actually got my card and stuck it into a machine yesterday. Since I have no SAS drives, I'm testing it with what I do have - a SATA drive. Except for hangups with the BIOS identifying the drive sometimes, it seems to work fine.

I think the supply issue is purely one of demand. I don't think that anyone is doing this on purpose to punish anyone.

 

[sechs]

FYI, my drives arrived yesterday. I hope to take them for a spin today.

 

[MaxBurn]

I don't suppose you have a 15k.3 and HBA to compare it to? SR seems to think it was a step back in performance, but cooler/quieter and sucks less power.

 

[sechs]

I haven't done anything serious yet, but, as much as I can tell, it doesn't perform any worse than a 15k.3.

It *does* seem to make a more disconcerting startup noise, reminiscent of the Atlas 15k.